THE LIVING EXTENSION OF A TRADITION: THE WHITE WOMAN IN AFRO-AMERICAN FICTION (STEREOTYPE, SEDUCTRESS, ALABASTER LADY)

Although literary critics have extensively studied black characters from both white and black American fiction, little attention has been paid to white images presented by black writers. Furthermore, literary criticism to date has not seen fit to distinguish between white male and female characters and has failed to examine the unique significance of the white woman to race relations.; An analysis of white women characters in Afro-American fiction yields valuable insight into black authors' views of themselves in an oppressive society. Each writer's level of dependence on white norms and values is reflected in his attitude towards white women.; In portraying white women, the black novel up to the early 1920s utilizes an existing stereotype and thus projects a uni-dimensional image of the white female as the sacred and graceful lady from the antebellum South. Afterwards, as social conditions in both white and black America changed, the original stereotype of the sacred white woman was extended in various directions by black authors. During the Harlem Renaissance, black pride and self-assertiveness topple the white woman from her pedestal while she is transformed into a pitiful object of sarcasm. In the novels of Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Chester Himes, the white woman is cast in the role of seductress who drains the black man's potency and becomes his psychological undoing. The blacks' increasing independence from white thought is reflected by the white woman's stereotype as powerless seductress. In many novels of the 1960s, her emasculating power is substantially reduced and she serves primarily as an instrument of vengeance. Several novelists of the 1960s, notably James Baldwin and John A. Williams, attempt to portray white women not as extensions of the traditional stereotype but as fully developed human beings. However, until the present only Alice Walker in Meridian creates a white woman who defies stereotypes and who projects her own humanity.